EVE General Discussion

When looking for the source of a problem, you need to look at the intersection of who profits from the problem and who can enable the problem to occur.

Do regular subscribers benefit from high PLEX prices? No.
Do subscribers with PLEX benefit from higher PLEX prices? Hell no.
Do people who buy PLEX to fund their activities benefit from higher PLEX prices? Yes, but how are they going to drive PLEX prices up?

Does CCP benefit from higher PLEX prices? Yes. They noticed more people not using subs, and a drop in income because people don't want to pay for all this feature-less "development" (lol "expansions") and they are using their own methods to force us into paying them more money. It's a cash grab, pure and simple.

Are you buying into it?

Yes

This implies a problem exists. This is false. No one is under any obligation to provide you with cheap/easy game time.

You do know that a PLEX costs more than a monthly subscription to buy right? And PLEX don't appear out of nowhere, someone paid real money for it to put it on the market.

And hi plex prices do benefit someone besides CCP: People who sell PLEX for ISK to those daft enough to use PLEX to pay their subscription

Wait what?

You really need to take an economics course. Seriously...

As said already, there is no problem. There is no drop in income if people plex. Because they still get the income. They just may get the income a month before the guy used his plex. Subscribers benefit because as more people buy GTC for the higher isk prices this will force the price down. And make more available to be bought.

CCP Only benefits from higher prices because now joe blow who was money to burn might decide to get a plex so he can get some isk now, instead of looking for a RMT. There is no issue with plex prices. simple as that.

And ib4l there are like 4 other threads about this same issue. sheesh

Yep. People think rising plex prices are a bad thing, but from CCPs perspective they aren't.

I promise, CCP cares more about the people buying plex(and funding the game) than those who are playing for free.

Exactly what I came here to say.

We're already here.

PLEX prices are high because of speculators, not because a bunch of players suddenly decided to start using PLEX for their accounts. It's an unfortunate consequence of CCP introducing PLEX as a convenient alternative to GTC trading and as a foundation for monetized perks like multiple character training.

It's not a certainty that PLEX being bought and sold on the market within EvE is new plex recently bought for $20.

Increasing the price of PLEX has 2 benefits for CCP.

1) it raises the ISK subscription fee resulting in more people needing to continue their ability to stay within EVE with subscription purchases with real money, which real money benefits CCP.

2) Because the PLEX is more lucrative due to it's having a higher ISK worth, more people are willing to pay CCP real money to buy PLEX to then turn into ISK, which results in CCP getting more money from people buying more PLEX to sell for ISK.

If Plex were worth only 300mil ISK, more people would be subbing to EvE with plex rather than money, which would result in less money for CCP. Eventually, through the PLEX disappearing through use of pilots licenses, they would become scarce resulting in them raising in isk and worth over time. And since $20 would only be buying 300mil ISK, less people would be buying PLEX since at that time, $20 = 300mil isk.

It's very obvious that PLEX being worth more ISK benefits CCP.

The question of the matter though, is CCP manipulating the worth of PLEX behind the scenes to benefit themselves? Which if they were, IMO, would be perfectly acceptable since ultimately they are a business providing a service.